Murphy’s Stout: A brand story in your pocket
Publicis Dublin
COMPANY PROFILE
AGENCY
Publicis Dublin is one of the largest and most awarded creative advertising agencies in Ireland.
Publicis Dublin is an affiliated agency of the the world’s third largest and fastest growing advertising
network, Publicis.
We want our Client’s brands and business to prosper and creativity is our tool. At Publicis our
definition of creativity extends beyond the winning of creative awards, to the development of new
ideas, products, brands and business solutions.
CLIENT
We embrace the recession induced challenges our clients face and provide innovative solutions.
We have Irish Advertising’s most creative culture so we attract Ireland’s most creative minds to work
on our client’s brands. At Publicis we believe creativity and effectiveness go hand in hand.
AWARDS
ALCOHOLIC BEVERAGES
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SILVER
Murphy’s Stout: A brand story in your pocket
Publicis Dublin
INTRODUCTION & BACKGROUND
This case couldn’t have been written five years ago. If we told you five years ago that a brand owner
could use a phone to build brand equity, run a CRM programme and stimulate in-pub trial, you would
have laughed. But that is what we started in the summer of 2012, and we did it in style garnering
a Cannes Lion for our creative efforts in 2013. Because this consolidation of activity to one source
increased market share while providing Murphy’s Stout with significant savings, we believe it is also
worthy of an ADFX award in 2014.
Five years ago if you were a small regional brand like Murphy’s Stout your brand communications
options were limited. Seeing as 85% of Murphy’s sales were in County Cork (population 519,000) you
could only use the paid media available in that region: billboards, limited regional radio and press.
You could afford to do three direct mailings to your database. If you wanted to do On-Trade sampling
you needed to spend money hiring a promotions company.
Meanwhile your key competitor Guinness has deep pockets; 16 times your ATL spend coupled with
sophisticated CRM Programmes. To compound the issue, your customers don’t understand economies
of scale and question why Murphy’s isn’t acting like the big brand they felt it should be, causing
a rift in their relationship with you. Just when things couldn’t look any bleaker, along comes the
smartphone.
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Murphy’s Stout: A brand story in your pocket
Publicis Dublin
MARKETING OBJECTIVES
In 2012 the shares of the stout market in Cork City were as follows:
Murphy’s 23.2%, Beamish 32.1% and Guinness 44.7%.
The Murphy’s brand team was very clear on their target audience. They were targeting Men 25 – 40
who drank stout as their primary drink. This was the same target as Guinness but quite different
to Beamish Stout which targeted Men over 40, with a value based proposition. A pint of Beamish is
on average 50c less than a Guinness or Murphy’s so the recession was good news for Beamish with
sales responding accordingly. Beamish and Murphy’s are both owned by Heineken Ireland so from a
portfolio management point of view Murphy’s was just competing with Guinness.
Throughout the western world On-Trade (drinking in bars) alcohol consumption has been declining for
many years. Couple this with Ireland’s “great recession” and it’s a perfect storm.
By 2012 we were four years into the recession and;
1 in 10 pubs had shut down
Unemployment was 14%
238 people (mostly young drinkers) were emigrating from Ireland every day
Consumer tracking showed less people could afford to go to the pub, and those who visit their local,
go less frequently, confining their consumption to one “big weekend night”.
Commercial Objective: Maintain Murphy’s current market share of the stout market at 23.2%
This objective may seem to lack ambition but in a recessionary market where Beamish’s value
proposition was expected to grow share, if Murphy’s could maintain its share then Guinness would be
the loser.
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Murphy’s Stout: A brand story in your pocket
Publicis Dublin
MARKETING OBJECTIVES
Marketing Objective: Increase frequency of purchase amongst the existing customer base
Murphy’s drinkers were going to the pub less often and when they got to the pub they were drinking
less. Murphy’s already had a CRM programme with three yearly mailings offering free pints, which
stimulated more pub visits. In 2012 there were 3000 people on the customer database and the
redemption rate was 16%. As part of the brand’s communications activity for 2012 we were tasked with
increasing this database to 6000 and increasing redemption rates to 30%.
Communications objective: Create a positive conversation (buzz) about the Murphy’s brand amongst
its target audience in Cork
By 2012 the Murphy’s drinkers felt neglected. They enjoyed and were proud of their local Cork stout
and while they saw local billboard advertising for the brand, the “marketing buzz” in the category was
all about Guinness. Guinness had the big budget TV commercials. Guinness sponsored the annual Jazz
Festival in Cork and in September 2011 Guinness celebrated the first Arthur’s Day when they effectively
took over Cork City with live music gigs. Murphy’s didn’t have Guinness’s deep pockets but it had to
do something to “create a conversation” about their brand. The campaign results would be measured
by tracking brand affinity and brand involvement scores.
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Murphy’s Stout: A brand story in your pocket
Publicis Dublin
THE TASK
The brand positioning was (and still is) “Authentic Real” and it emanated from the insight that in a
Global World the target felt a pride in who they are and where they’re from – Ireland’s “Rebel County”.
The ‘Official Pint of Us’ 2010–12 campaign came from this insight and it traded off the Brand Idea
“Murphy’s Keeps it Real”. The campaign brought the proposition to life using local landmarks and
witty headlines.
While the campaign resonated with the target audience it lacked emotional depth and affinity scores
were lower than expected. Getting high affinity scores from 48 sheet posters or local radio had proven
to be difficult.
We started working with Murphy’s in February 2012 and when we received the client brief we
immediately started thinking beyond advertising. While we recognised the value of previous
advertising an extension of same would not be capable of creating a “conversation” around the
brand. We knew that whatever the solution it certainly needed to punch well above its weight.
Affinity scores in the drinks category are historically driven by big budget TV commercials. Our key
competitor Guinness is the benchmark for such commercials as they have produced the most iconic
Irish advertising of all time. They are omnipresent and act like the category leader they are by
drowning out any activity from smaller challenger brands. The refrain from Murphy’s focus groups was
consistent and constant: why can’t our brand act more like Guinness?
We had very little money and what seemed like a Herculean task. However we saw it as a challenge
and early on in the process we decided we couldn’t play the same game as Guinness. We had to move
out of paid media and play on a different pitch.
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Murphy’s Stout: A brand story in your pocket
Publicis Dublin
THE STRATEGY
We started by looking at brands that succeeded in punching above their respective weights by creating
a disproportionate conversation about their low budget brand communications. In most instances those
conversations were fuelled by controversy and the best exponents of this genre were Paddy Power,
Hunky Dorys and Ryanair. However we had to be more disciplined in our approach as it wasn’t enough to
simply create a conversation, we also had to build equity for our brand proposition of “Keeping it Real”.
While our market share gave Murphy’s the license to act like a Challenger Brand we decided the only
way to make an impact, with our limited budget, was to out-manoeuvre our key competitor through a
focus on owned and/or earned media. At this point in the agency’s development we had integrated
BTL and digital with our existing ATL offering and as such we had started to run integrated agency
workshops (traditional with digital) when developing campaigns. We ran one such workshop in April 2012
for Murphy’s, reviewing international best practice for “owned” and “earned” in the drinks category.
We quickly recognised the value of digital campaigns for smaller challenger brands as it gave them the
opportunity to ‘skip a generation’. The question became; instead of Murphy’s moving to compete with
Guinness on TV, what if the brand moved to mobile before Guinness? We were now focused on a channel
Guinness has never used and this got us excited. However, strategically we still needed a campaign idea
that would bring our “keeping it real” proposition to life.
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Murphy’s Stout: A brand story in your pocket
Publicis Dublin
THE IDEA
Having trawled international best practice for challenger brands we found the solution on our
doorstep. In 2011 Budweiser Ice Cold ran a multi-media campaign in Ireland featuring a fictional
American character called Scott Campbell. In the TV commercials, Scott promoted a mobile app
that allowed consumers to get a free pint of Bud Ice if the temperature in Ireland went over 21
degrees during the summer months. This was a heavyweight campaign that ran on TV and billboards
throughout the summer of 2011 so there was a high level of awareness of the campaign. Predictably
Budweiser didn’t have to give away that many pints as the temperature in Ireland that summer rarely
went above the threshold. True to its brand essence the campaign was cool, American and sunny.
This was the antithesis of the Murphy’s brand essence: authentically local, down-to-earth and largely
consumed when the weather is only suitable for indoor pursuits. That of course was our opportunity.
What if we were to parody a big global brand like Budweiser for being ‘unreal’ (expecting warm
Summers in Ireland) thereby asserting our “Keeping it Real” credentials. We had our idea. We found
that Smart Phone penetration in Ireland was 65% amongst 25-34 year olds (April 2012). While this
meant that 35% of our base couldn’t engage with the campaign we felt the penetration figure would
increase over time.
Cork happens to be one of the wettest counties in Ireland. Our idea was for an app called “When It
Rains It Pours”: Every time it rained more than 2 mm in Cork county during the Summer of 2012 we
would give away 1,000 free pints of Murphy’s.
The weather didn’t let us down and that summer in Cork was the wettest summer in over 40 years.
Now that we had our mechanic, we developed a video viral that directly parodied the Budweiser TV
commercial. The video was unapologetically and suitably low budget given that it was a challenger
brand parodying Budweiser.
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Murphy’s Stout: A brand story in your pocket
Publicis Dublin
THE IDEA
We developed a mechanic to enable the trade to simply activate the promotion. In contrast Budweiser
had developed a cumbersome mechanic that left publicans with a poor experience. With Murphy’s
the bartender simply gave the customer a four-digit code to put in their phone and the customer
could redeem their free pint. No vouchers, no sales promotional personnel, just happy customers, bar
owners and staff. All data was then relayed to a central computer in the brewery. This state-of-theart fulfillment process was recognised with two Golds at the European IMCC awards 2013 and a Gold
for “Marketing Innovation” at the 2013 All Ireland Marketing Awards. The process is now best practice
worldwide.
In addition we quickly recognised that the App could be utilised as a CRM portal that would eliminate
the need for Murphy’s direct mail programme. Now we had a complete campaign platform in the
pocket: brand building, CRM and sales promotion. But most importantly we felt we had a campaign
that would create a conversation around the Murphy’s brand in Cork while leaping ahead of Guinness
in terms of innovation and engagement. For the first time ever we were to become a leader in the
category - something we hoped our target would recognise and appreciate.
We developed the app over the three month period, April - July 2012. We shot the video in early July
and the campaign was launched on July 23rd. While this was primarily an owned and earned media
strategy we spent €30,000 seeding the campaign in digital media during July/August 2012. We had
a presence on Facebook, Peoples Republic of Cork and 02 media. In 2013 we used the same digital
media and added local radio bringing our spend up to €40,000.
In addition we quickly recognised that the App could be utilised as a CRM portal that would eliminate
the need for Murphy’s direct mail programme. Now we had a complete campaign platform in the
pocket: brand building, CRM and sales promotion. But most importantly we felt we had a campaign
that would create a conversation around the Murphy’s brand in Cork while leaping ahead of Guinness
in terms of innovation and engagement. For the first time ever we were to become a leader in the
category - something we hoped our target would recognise and appreciate.
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Murphy’s Stout: A brand story in your pocket
Publicis Dublin
THE IDEA
We developed the app over the three month period, April - July 2012. We shot the video in early July
and the campaign was launched on July 23rd. While this was primarily an owned and earned media
strategy we spent €30,000 seeding the campaign in digital media during July/August 2012. We had
a presence on Facebook, Peoples Republic of Cork and 02 media. In 2013 we used the same digital
media and added local radio bringing our spend up to €40,000.
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Murphy’s Stout: A brand story in your pocket
Publicis Dublin
THE RESULTS
Did we achieve our commercial objective of maintaining market share?
Four months into the campaign Murphy’s sales increased for the first time in seven years. In the 20
months since the launch of the campaign Murphy’s market share has increased by 0.5%. During the
same period Guinness’s share has fallen by 4.1%. Beamish (with its 50c cheaper proposition) increased
its share by 3.6%.
Did we increase frequency of purchase?
The impact on Murphy’s sales in participating pubs was immediate. Our analysis of outlets shows that
since the start of the campaign non-participating pubs have had an average 5% decline in Murphy’s
sales.
Participating outlets experienced an outstanding 6% increase. There are three reasons:
1. Mid-week drinking
Because the activation of the app was rain dependent it meant users could find themselves
redeeming a pint mid-week and then staying on to purchase a second or third pint. 55% of redemptions
were mid-week.
2. Increased brand loyalty
When a redeemed free pint of Murphy’s becomes your first drink of the evening you are more likely to
stay with that drink for the remainder of the evening.
3. App users are more likely (than non users) to purchase more in the future.
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Murphy’s Stout: A brand story in your pocket
Publicis Dublin
THE RESULTS
As previously stated we were tasked with increasing our database from 3,000 to 6,000. After 20 months it
is now 29,300. Prior to the campaign our offline voucher redemption rates were 16% and our target was
30%. Our redemption rates are now 69%.
Did we create a conversation about the Murphy’s brand?
Straight away the campaign captured the public’s imagination and we got extensive local, national and
even international media coverage. October 2012 research in Cork County conducted by 2CV Research
using a sample of 280 app users versus 279 non-users (All Murphy’s drinkers) found that:
Brand affinity scores amongst users were 16 points higher than amongst non-users
Brand personality scores amongst users were up significantly on 4 out of 5 metrics
In addition the campaign has been recognised by Marketing Professional Award juries from Prague to
Cannes, winning:
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Cannes Lion, Bronze, Mobile Category 2013
European Integrated Marketing Communications awards 2013: 2 Golds for Digital
Communications and Brand Building
Irish Mobile Marketing Awards 2013: Grand Prix Winner
All Ireland Marketing Awards 2013: Gold for Innovation
APMC Awards 2013: 3 Golds for “Use of Mobile”, “Creative Execution” and “Alcoholic Beverages”
Murphy’s Stout: A brand story in your pocket
Publicis Dublin
THE RESULTS
Return on Investment
In order to isolate the effect of the campaign on sales we need to look at those outlets that participated
in the promotion versus those that didn’t. At this point it’s important to note that no other variables
in the marketing mix could have affected sales in those outlets. There were no price changes in the
stout category. There were no changes in distribution. Beamish hasn’t run any ATL advertising since the
Summer of 2012. Guinness had run its usual heavy weight activity. Our ROI is calculated against those
pubs the campaign affected i.e. participating outlets.
For ROI there are four broad considerations:
1. How much did the campaign cost? This includes paid media costs, development of the app and
associated agency fees. It should be noted that the “Free Pints” are not considered to be a cost as they
were already being redeemed in pubs pre campaign launch through direct mail vouchers. Clearly “Free
Pints” are also excluded from any sales increase data.
2. The net profit for the brewery derived from new sales in participating outlets. The “new sales” figure
is based on the year on year uplift in sales.
3. The savings made by migrating the CRM programme to a digital platform. Traditionally Murphy’s
operated three annual mailings to their database with redeemable vouchers.
4. The value of owned and earned media. We have used offline PR models to value both the off and
online media earned by this campaign.
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Murphy’s Stout: A brand story in your pocket
Publicis Dublin
THE RESULTS
When you add the saving made on the CRM programme with the incremental profit in participating
outlets they out weight the cost of the campaign by a ratio of 2.26:1.0 This figure does not include a
valuation for the earned media: Press and radio reports, social media and viewing of the video viral on
the app. The value of these are difficult to quantify however if included that would increase the return to
3.15. An even greater value comes from the long-term effects.
Long Term Effects
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In 20 months the Murphy’s database has increased by a phenomenal 970% (29,300) and we can
now reach those drinkers for a fraction of the cost of the previous CRM mailing programmes.
Currently 160 of the 320 pubs in Cork City participate in the campaign. As the programme roles
out we should see the same uplift in sales in the new outlets.
All brand metrics are stronger amongst app users so as we increase the app user base brand
affinity scores will increase amongst those new users
Murphy’s Stout: A brand story in your pocket
Publicis Dublin
THE IMPACT
Murphy’s When It Rains It Pour’s app changed the way drinks brands utilise mobile phones for marketing
communications. This in turn has raised consumer expectations and made the “old ways” of doing CRM
and in pub redemption redundant. The app set the benchmark worldwide and others have followed.
Sixteen months after our launch Guinness launched their brand app, clearly mimicking Murphy’s with
it’s sophisticated CRM portal, Free Pint promotions and the on-trade fulfillment mechanic we pioneered.
Imitation is indeed the sincerest form of flattery.
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Murphy’s Stout: A brand story in your pocket
Publicis Dublin
NEW LEARNINGS
“The more things change, the more they stay the same”
The world of marketing communications has changed utterly over the past five years but the principles
of branding remain the same. Many brands rushed headlong into new media with little rigour and a
complete disregard for the principles on which their successful brands were built. Brands have wasted
millions chasing “likes”, “having a presence” and launching apps that are never used. We believe that
if brand owners had applied the same rules to these new digital opportunities as they did to the old,
there would be a lot more success stories. Murphy’s is a success story because we used our traditional
“storytelling” skills to build brand equity and engage with our target audience both emotionally and
rationally. Sound familiar? It just so happened that we used a digital vehicle to do so.
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Murphy’s Stout: A brand story in your pocket
Publicis Dublin
SUMMARY
Back in 2012 when we first started working with Murphy’s it was a regional stout brand that was
overshadowed by the might of Guinness. This paper tells the story of how we stole a march on Guinness
by recognising the potential smartphones offered a small challenger brand like Murphy’s. The results
of the campaign have been outstanding with increases in sales, market share and brand affinity. In
addition the campaign has received a plethora of awards for creativity and digital innovation at some
of the world’s most prestigious award ceremonies and it is now the benchmark for similar campaigns
worldwide.
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Murphy’s Stout: A brand story in your pocket
Publicis Dublin
MEDIA GALLERY
CREATIVE
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